Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself...

Who is the scariest person in America?

According to the Sunday papers, Sharon Osbourne, Ed Koch, Matt Damon and Mary Mitchell, it’s Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the GOP candidate for Vice President.

Mrs. Palin is the target of a renewed round of invective from the media and political elites this weekend. In the past two weeks the Left has been spraying manure at the woman in hopes something will stick. All this has served to do is to improve the McCain-Palin poll numbers and to move the discussion away from Barack Obama’s programs to his qualifications for high office verses hers.

And yet, although Americans increasingly see the Left as a bunch of bullies ganging up on Sarah Palin, and even though Obama would dearly love to talk about economics, his “friends” insist on trying to drive a stake through Mrs. Palin’s heart. Thus the effort for Obama mires down in precisely the kind of slimy politics that Obama had vowed to avoid.

We are now at the point where the hatred of Sarah Palin on the left lapses into actual derangement as her enemies wish for her to be obliterated, jailed, destroyed, execrated. Let’s tiptoe through some of the verbal nosegays her enemies are offering:

“She hates women,” – Pink

“I think there's a really good chance Sarah Palin could be president, and I think that's a really scary thing, because I don't know anything about her,” –Matt Damon. What better reason for fear than ignorance?

"Palin should be [a] laughingstock to all feminists"—Mary Mitchell

“Sarah Palin named two of her children after witches.” --The New Republic

“She's friends with all the teenage boys. You have to say no when your kids say, 'can we sleep over at the Palin’s? No! NO!'” –Randi Rhodes, who also claimed this week that McCain was “well-treated” by the North Vietnamese while a POW….

“A cocky wacko.” –Senator Lincoln Chaffee

"Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." –Wendy Doniger, Newsweek.

“After four years of sex and treachery in Desperate Housewives, I thought I was a perfect pick for vice president.” --Eva Longoria

"I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail." -- Bob Herbert, New York Times

“[Her] primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.” –Carol Fowler, South Carolina Democratic Chairwoman.

“Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right.” –Cintra Wilson, Salon magazine.

"In picking Palin, Republicans are lending credence to the sexist assumption that women voters are too stupid to investigate or care about the issues, and merely want to vote for someone who looks like them ... “ –Ann Friedman, The American Prospect

“[Palin’s values] more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers…What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.” --Juan Cole, professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan.

“Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She’s such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it’s easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.” –Cintra Wilson, Salon.

“…Night after night, [Palin] appears in my dreams, always as a scolding, ominous figure.” –David Plotz, Slate.

‘Tis said that insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result. The Left expects that one of these days someone is going to say something about Palin so apt that people will turn massively against her in ridicule and scorn. That’s not going to happen.

What is happening is that Barack Obama and the campaign are diminishing themselves by fighting over the qualifications of the GOP voice presidential candidate, which only serves to bring Obama’s wafer-thin resume into sharper focus. What is happening is that the people who should be talking about the economy –the GOP’s weakest issue—are talking about Palin instead. The Left is revealing its snobbery, its elitism, its scorn for ordinary Americans and their culture, its hatred of religion, and, yes, its sexism when a female dares to disagree with revealed leftist wisdom.

Obama can still win this election, but he and his side are beginning to deserve to lose.